J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > East Sussex c.1806-20 > Vale of Heathfield Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner ?The Eddystone Lighthouse in a Storm by Daylight c.1813

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘?The Eddystone Lighthouse in a Storm by Daylight’ c.1813
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 40 Recto:
?The Eddystone Lighthouse in a Storm by Daylight circa 1813
D10257
Turner Bequest CXXXVII 39
Pencil and watercolour on white wove paper, 181 x 228 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘39’ top left, inverted
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram towards bottom left
Stamped in black ‘CXXXVII 39’ top left, inverted
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Along with watercolours on folios 41 recto and 42 recto (D10258, D10260; CXXXVII 40, 41) this study perhaps represents the Eddystone Lighthouse, off Plymouth, which Turner may have visited in 1813, producing a finished watercolour of it at night by 1817. There is a possibly related watercolour of an empty sea and sky on folio 39 verso opposite (D10256; CXXXVII 38).
This dynamic study has been described as ‘of a freedom normally associated with the late 1810s, or even later’,1 but it is here dated to about the former year, assuming Turner visited the lighthouse then and represents it here. There is a fuller discussion under D10258.
The composition is inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliated sequence.
1
Butlin, Wilton and Gage 1974, p.66.
Verso:
Blank

Matthew Imms
May 2011

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘?The Eddystone Lighthouse in a Storm by Daylight c.1813 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 2011, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-the-eddystone-lighthouse-in-a-storm-by-daylight-r1131300, accessed 19 April 2024.